Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Typical wireless communications systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency divisional multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems, and Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE/LTE-Advanced is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile standard promulgated by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
A wireless communications network may include a number of base stations (BSs) that can support communication for a number of user equipment (UEs). A UE may communicate with a BS via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the BS to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE to the BS. As will be described in more detail herein, a BS may be referred to as a Node B, a gNB, an access point (AP), a radio head, a transmit receive point (TRP), a new radio (NR) BS, a 5G Node B, and/or the like).
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. New radio (NR), which may also be referred to as 5G, is a set of enhancements to the LTE mobile standard promulgated by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). It is designed to better support mobile broadband Internet access by improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum, and better integrating with other open standards using OFDMA with a cyclic prefix (CP) on the downlink (DL), using OFDMA with a CP and/or SC-FDMA (also known as discrete Fourier transform spread ODFM (DST-s-OFDM)) on the uplink (UL), as well as support beamforming, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology, and carrier aggregation. However, as the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, there exists a need for further improvements in LTE, NR, and 5G technologies. Preferably, these improvements should be applicable to other multi-access technologies and the telecommunication standards that employ these technologies.